Day: October 20, 2011

Everybody, we are sometimes told, loves a bargain, and this morning an agreement was reached between the Premier League and the Football League which will likely mean that England’s biggest clubs will have an unlimited supply of one of the most valuale assets in the game: young players. The Elite Player Performance Plan (EPPP) was an agreement which hinted at the Football League being led by clubs that are run by eunuchs, but their defenders will claim that the forty-six clubs that voted for a revised youth academy – which will mean that a selling club is paid just £3,000 per year for every year of a player’s development between the ages of nine and eleven, while the annual fee for a player from the age of twelve to sixteen will range between £12,500 and £40,000 – because the Premier League effectively held a gun to its head by witholding the £5m that it is due to pay the clubs of the Football League to help cover the cost of funding youth development until it voted in favour of the decision. On top of this, the geographical boundaries which prevent clubs from signing players from a radius greater than ninety minutes’ journey from their own ground will also be removed. In other words, the new rules will allow a “free” market in which clubs take players on from anywhere, with the...